Child prostitutes, teen drug addicts: Southeast Asia’s dark side revealed in Malaysian comic artist’s new book

A group of Malaysian friends travelled across Southeast Asia 20 years ago looking to eat, shop and laugh, but they discovered more than they were prepared for

‘All I saw was futures being destroyed,’ says comic artist Arif Rafhan Othman, who has chronicled the journey in the graphic novel Reality B****slap

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A prostitute walks into a brothel in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. It was in Phnom Penh that Malaysian comic book artist first saw young children walking the streets looking for customers. Photo: Getty Images

Published: 9:15am, 18 Jul 2020Updated: 9:25pm, 19 Jul 2020

Trips with the guys are meant to be fun holidays offering a chance to have a break from everyday life. But for Malaysian comic artist Arif Rafhan Othman, he and his friends got more than they bargained for when they set out on a rollicking journey across Southeast Asia 20 years ago.

In Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam, they had already been grabbed by young glue sniffers on the streets, ravaged by skin infections and in the throes of withdrawal. Then on landing in the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh, they were given graphic pamphlets warning them that sex with children was illegal. They were bewildered at first, but they soon realised why the warning was necessary.

Rafhan and his friends saw a young girl who was selling flowers stroke an old man’s arm suggestively, allowing the stranger to tickle her in a way far beyond familial. When they returned to their hostel later that night, they saw two scantily clad girls – no older than 10 – waiting under a lamp post, for presumably only one reason.

Two decades on, the memory still haunts him.

“Recalling that moment still makes my stomach churn,” says the 43-year-old father of three. “All I saw was futures being destroyed. These kids were so young, and their lives were being ruined by these so-called tourists with money – it was devastating.”